Martha's Vineyard!! and Some Other Places

From Cape Cod to the Long Island Sound, the wind has cooperated in getting us quickly to each destination. We have been doing our part, not pressing our luck by sitting out the rainy and windy days. We spent two such days in Onset, MA where we took only two photos:

 Some hydrangeas on someone's front lawn.

 Guess which one of us saw this and said, "Spooky Halloween House," and which said, "Look, a meth lab."

There was not a lot going on. We saw a lot of seasonal closure signs so it was probably just our timing because the beaches looked lovely, but with the wind and rain we decided to stay confined inside the boat.

When the weather cleared we crossed Buzzard's Bay to Hadley Harbor where we spent a calm night before a quick 7 mile trip to Martha's Vineyard. Though we hadn't thought we would go out of our way to see Martha's Vineyard, when I saw one of the little gingerbread houses in our guidebook, I pretty much insisted. We had all of Friday to walk to Oak Bluffs and check out the little dollhouses. Here they are for your enjoyment:

The next day as predicted, it poured and we spent a miserable day on board, pitching and tossing like we had never experienced before. Even Jon was feeling sick, so we struck out for land in the last couple of hours before sunset for some relief. Once we were on the dinghy looking back at the boat we could see it was bucking like it had just entered the rodeo and couldn't believe we were able to sit there for most of the day. The dinghy wasn't performing much better but it ushered us safely to shore and back.

We left the next day for Cuttyhunk, ignoring feelings that we hadn't seen enough (I forgot to look for the Flying Horses carousel while we were in Oak Bluffs) but as they say in House Stark, "Winter is Coming." As much as we've said we're not in any hurry, we would like to avoid getting snowed on.

The following day we finally got the wind vane to earn its keep as it did most of the steering for our eight-hour trip to Block Island. Our porpoise entourage turned to dolphins. As usual, the first unfamiliar fin I saw I labeled, "Shark!"But no. They were dolphins.

Block Island was the site of my contemplation of both the jerkiness of humanity (because of the extreme rudeness we were met with as soon as we got off the dock), and later the kindness of strangers after we met Donavin at a pub. He told us about his solo trek through the Rockies from New Mexico to Colorado, bought us a round of drinks, and even gave us a ride back to our dock. My faith in humanity was restored just in time for us to start making our way to New York City.